What's New for WinForms in .NET 4.0

Question

I could not find any information about the new WinForm features other than this blog post: http://blog.codinglight.com/2009/05/future-of-winforms-whats-changed-in.html which states:

213 types , and 9 types have been added. 596 methods were changed, 50 were added , and 8 were removed.

So what's in these changes for the joe developer?

Answer 1

Windows Forms is in maintenance mode. Each release of the framework program included some changes, but all of them were made only in order to tighten security or ensure compatibility with new versions of Windows.

The related blog post reveals new classes that are internal and cannot be used from your own code. VisualStyleElement.ExplorerTreeView helps a PropertyGrid draw a Vista style tree with triangles for nodes. CompatibleFrameWork material is in the internal System.Deployment namespace, so I think it helps ClickOnce work with the .NET 4.0 version and the Target Framework parameter in the Application Project tab.

WF is fully augmented; it will remain as it is for the foreseeable future.

Answer 2

I do not think there is anything new for the joe developer in WinForms. Microsoft is now investing in WPF. All these changes are related to internal code refactoring.

According to a comment from the group manager for WinForms on the Somasegar blog :

We continue to invest in WinForms for .NET FX 4. This includes the kernel waiting to maintain compatibility for applications already written in WinForms, fixing bugs that developers reported to the general experience of developers through Visual Studio, as well as working and developing some functions.

Unfortunately, WinForms is not even mentioned in the article What's New in the .NET Framework 4 on MSDN.

Answer 3

Check out the Rx extensions . Together with the integrated IObservable in .NET 4, they greatly simplify the advanced EventHandling. This is not limited to WinForms, although it is already available for 3.5, but not yet integrated.